Page 95 - Beauties for Life in the Qur'an

THE EVOLUTION MISCONCEPTION 93

that non-living materials came together to form living organ-
isms, had been widely accepted. It was commonly believed that
insects came into being from food leftovers, and mice from
wheat. Interesting experiments were conducted to prove this
theory. Some wheat was placed on a dirty piece of cloth, and it
was believed that mice would originate from it after a while.
Similarly, worms developing in meat was assumed to be evi-
dence of spontaneous generation. However, only some time
later was it understood that worms did not appear on meat
spontaneously, but were carried there by flies in the form of lar-
vae, invisible to the naked eye.
Even in the period when Darwin wrote The Origin of Species,
the belief that bacteria could come into existence from non-liv-
ing matter was widely accepted in the world of science.
However, five years after the publication of Darwin's book,
Louis Pasteur announced his results after long studies and ex-
periments, which disproved spontaneous generation, a corner-
stone of Darwin's theory. In his triumphal lecture at the
Sorbonne in 1864, Pasteur said, "Never will the doctrine of sponta-
neous generation recover from the mortal blow struck by this simple
experiment." 34
Advocates of the theory of evolution resisted the findings of
Pasteur for a long time. However, as the development of science
unraveled the complex structure of the cell of a living being, the
idea that life could come into being coincidentally faced an even
greater impasse.

Inconclusive Efforts
in the Twentieth Century
The first evolutionist who took up the subject of the origin of
life in the twentieth century was the renowned Russian biolo-
gist Alexander Oparin. With various theses he advanced in the
1930's, he tried to prove that the cell of a living being could orig-